Faster Internet: What I Did on My Winter Vacation
You may have read Monique Morrow's posting in late December about A Faster Internet for 2009. Something to keep in mind also is that some of the slowness you perceive in Internet performance may in fact be related to the network within your home, especially if you have wireless. So, even though a faster Internet is on the near horizon, there are some things you can do right now to make your home wireless Internet experience impressively faster. I just made one simple change at home while I was off this week that now has us surfing the web at warp speed.The big change I made was to simply swap out our venerable old Linksys WRT54G router (which has served us well for several years), with a new Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router (pictured below). The WRT610N is full of new features that deliver speed and higher wireless performance in your home: Dual bands, extended range, and support of the 802.11 n Draft standard ("n" is much faster and delivers your web pages, video and other data much more quickly).
I am startled by the faster performance -- I feel stupid I didn't do this many months ago. To be honest, even though I knew the technology has been improving steadily, I had put off swapping to a more modern router, because I figured that most of the computers in our house use the 802.11g standard and wouldn't benefit from the higher speed and throughput of 802.11 n. But the general improvements in technology seem to have provided quite an upgrade in network performance even for old laptops we have that are using 802.11 g. And, we had forgotten that our iMac desktop purchased last year already has 802.11 n capability built in, so it is now zooming!
In short, the improved wireless performance feels like an instant upgrade to all of the computers and gaming systems in the house (since a lot of what happens on all of these is via the network) and the new router -- even with all these bells and whistles -- cost well under US$ 200.
By the way, while you're saving your pennies for a new router, there are a few things you can do to improve wireless networking in your home that are good general practice, such as moving the router away from wireless phones, obstructions, baby monitors, etc. Our Linksys.com Home Networking Tips page offers many tips on how to get the most from your home wireless network.
And, I really do recommend you upgrade to a new router like the WRT610N. Here's CNET's Review of the WRT610N which tells all about it. (The CNET gang make fun of the geeky product name, but really seem to like everything else
)That's my tip for the new year. Enjoy!
Posted by Martin Hardee at 11:45AM PST
Cisco Around the Web